You spend a lot of time trying to build your real estate business through marketing efforts, referrals, and other resources. Unless you are offering what buyers and sellers are looking for in a real estate agent, however, you will have a lot of trouble finding repeat clients and referrals in the market. Once you know what people are looking for, you can start to market toward that and attract more clients than ever before.

What Buyers Are Looking For

There are many different kinds of buyers and you need to know what each of them are looking for. For example, first time home buyers are looking for someone who is very knowledgeable and can walk them through every part of the process with ease. Investors, on the other hand, are looking for something a bit more transactional as well as a lot of data. Most of them are looking for someone who can be aggressive when it comes to finding great deals. Out of town buyers will rely on you to be very thorough since they cannot be there to do that themselves. To be successful, you need to be able to identify the type of buyer you are dealing with to better serve them. All buyers will expect you to have a deep knowledge and understanding of the area so you can provide them with the insight before they purchase.

What Sellers Are Looking For

Sellers tend to be a lot less complex than buyers. On the surface, most of them are just looking for a real estate agent that can sell their home quickly and get them top dollar for the listing. You will not be able to do that for every home but you need to be able to tell people what is realistic and what they can do to get the job done faster, such as repairs or some landscaping. Not everyone will take your advice but when they do, it will make your job easier and you will be able to better impress them when it sells faster and for a great price. The best thing you can do with sellers is provide them with the best expectations so they do not come in with something unrealistic that will ruin their image of you in the end. If the seller cannot come closer to those realistic expectations, they may not be the best customer to rely on for referrals.

Basic Skills all Clients are Looking For

In the end, when it comes to some pretty basic skills, it will not matter whether or not you are working with buyers or sellers. All of your clients will expect you to have these basic skills when they hire you to be their real estate agent:

Negotiation skills

Knowledge of the area and neighborhoods

Knowledge of the buying and selling process

Knowledge of the contracts used during the process

Communication skills

Responsiveness

Honesty and integrity

There are, of course, other skills that they will expect you to have such as basic people skills and technical skills as it pertains to the industry. As you get further along in your career, you will get better with the technical skills but you will need to actively work on your people skills if they are not as great as you would like them to be.

Once you have all of these skills mastered, you are ready to take on the real estate world and become a successful agent in the market of your choosing. Even if you have not mastered these skills, you should begin to work more and more on them so you can give your clients the best you can offer. Over time, you will begin to master all of them.

Eligibility Criteria

Applicants must meet OHFA Income limits.

Properties must meet purchase price limits which can vary by county.

Applicants must meet debt to income ratios for their loan type.

Credit score requirements

Conventional, USDA, VA, and FHA 203(k) Loans: 640 or Higher

FHA Loans (Non-203(k)): 660 or higher. Credit scores of 650-659 are acceptable for an additional fee.

Applicants must purchase a qualifying property that is limited to two acres within a municipal corporation and five acres outside a municipal corporation, unless additional acreage is required by local health or safety code. Qualifying properties include the following:

Wisconsin

Wyoming

Often times borrowers wonder about the basics of the “secondary” mortgage market. But what are they, and why do lenders “sell” them loans? Mortgages, and specifically liens, are substantial sums of money that are tied up for up to 30 years.

While depository institutions, which are chartered by both the Federal and State governments, have the capacity to lend large amounts of capital over long periods of time, mortgage banks don’t. Keep in mind that a bank, in theory, can take the money it has in deposits, pool the money together, and lend it out to make home loans.

In order to maintain a sufficient pool of money such that they can continue making loans, mortgage banks, which do not take deposits companies but offer greater program and rate flexibility, “sell off” borrower’s mortgages to another institution—often Fannie or Freddie, but also to pension funds, insurance companies, or securities dealers. Along with allowing mortgage banks to do more business, this practice earns mortgage bankers a commission on every loan they sell.

A mortgage has one of two paths it can follow once it enters the secondary market. It can be sold by a lender into one of Freddie, Fannie, or another financial institution’s investment portfolios for cash, or it can be pooled with other mortgages in exchange for Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). MBS are very liquid investments that are traded on Wall Street through securities dealers, which means that lenders can easily hold or sell them. In turn, these transactions provide capital that can be loaned out to other borrowers.

Many borrowers tell their loan officers that they prefer obtaining their mortgage through a smaller shop rather than a huge national bank. That is an interesting phenomenon – what is happening out there? After all, aren’t the rates and prices all the same?

It turns out, the answer is “no.” For smaller lenders, size is critical. They are more nimble. Midsized firms, for example, pride themselves on processing times, quick underwriting, and being able to close loans in a timely manner. Currently some of the large national banks take over a month, even two or three, to close a loan.

During the financial crisis in 2009, it stung larger home lenders, and the heightened regulation that followed hasn’t done them any favors. Still, the biggest banks, on average, originate roughly double the volume of all other banks each month.

Returns have something to do with that. While interest rates are low, mortgage returns have risen because such loans have become more attractive to secondary buyers, partly because of stricter underwriting standards following the housing meltdown.

Teams of experienced LO’s, processors, and other support staff allow us to find the best rate and price among several companies, and do it efficiently and usually less expensively than a large bank. Non-huge lenders pride themselves on customer service, great pricing, and knowledge of the local markets. It is very hard for a new loan officer in a bank branch to beat that. And borrowers, in turn, are agreeing.

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